


Never Have I Slept Soundly

by AeroCat



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gen, alien au - but different than canon, human au?, im not sure what to call this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-07 10:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6799558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeroCat/pseuds/AeroCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruby wakes with no memory of her past. While trying to piece it together, she ends up watching over Steven, a strange kid with even stranger powers.</p><p>But when she finds herself protecting him from the perpetrators of multiple human abductions, Ruby learns she may not be so normal herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to take a stab at an action/adventure au for a while.

The lights were blinding, and once they subsided the smoke was thick in the air. Windows and store displays were ruined. As always, people littered the ground: some scared, some unconscious, but all otherwise unharmed. Then, several faces flashed across the screen - young and old, a mix of people who had all gone missing in the last two weeks - and the count ticked up one from the most recent attack.

Ruby grimaced as she changed the channel, the tv flickering to a decidedly more light-hearted cartoon. The news was probably not the best thing to watch with a kid around. She glanced to the side to see if Steven had noticed.

He continued to tune his ukulele, plucking away at strings between turns. She thought she was safe from the upcoming barrage of questions, but then:

"What in the world could be causing all these accidents?” He asked with a face full of concern. “And where are those people going?"

 _Great job Ruby_ , she thought. _I just met this kid and our first exchange is going to be about the news._

"Don't know,” she answered, burying herself deeper into the ripped couch and focusing on the Tom and Jerry rerun that was now airing. She sat quietly, the noise of the cartoon mayhem the only sound hanging in the air besides the heavy silence.

It was true: Ruby didn't have a clue to what was going on. But she didn't know much about herself either. For the last few weeks she had been living in an old, abandoned barn; trying hard to see through the haze and recall anything about herself.

The field was on fire at the time, but the flames were sputtering out from the rain. She had woken with her face planted firmly in the wet earth. Her hands and arms were ripped apart, as if she had tried to stop herself from falling to the rough ground, but nothing else hurt besides her head.

She knew her name. First only, no last name to be found. There was a crisp hundred in her pocket but no wallet.

She had a vague recollection of sisters - at least one, though the faces blurred together until she only could see her own features instead. Her earliest memories after awaking were of her frantically finding any way to locate them. With no ID she couldn’t get into a library, but the nearby park had a small band setting up for a show.

Once she saw the laptop, she went right for it; even as the man using the laptop was positioned in front of it. She had been a little...pushy. Afterwards Greg had been understanding about the matter, and he even explained that getting shoved off of a chair by a stranger was “probably the least-weird thing that’s ever happened to him.”

But even with the help of the internet, with no last name to work with she was stuck. Greg didn’t pry further but was unusually calm about the matter for a stranger, letting Ruby have her small meltdown while he waited patiently. Though she tried to keep it quiet, she eventually spilled the beans between nervous remarks - her mouth moving of it’s own accord, unable to disconnect her thoughts from her words.  

Greg had suggested she go to the police for help - they might know what happened, or at least who she was. Ruby wasn’t comfortable with this idea: if she didn’t know who she was, who knew what she could actually be? Instead, she continued to search on his laptop whenever he was setting up for the day, and returned to the abandoned barn at night.

Over time, searching the internet had evolved into helping Greg’s band setup equipment - the chance of finding relatives felt increasingly slim and she was losing hope - assisting the band was a great distraction. She was surprised he was willing to let someone he had only met a few weeks prior work with his equipment, and was even more surprised when he had asked her to watch his teenage son, Steven, for a few nights.

Snapping back to reality, Ruby realized that something had to be said to cut the tension from the question about the news. "So...you got any homework, Steven?"

Drawing out the sound, he replied: "Nope! Never do."

"Alright kid, I don’t blame you for not wanting to do your work." She gave him a skeptical grin from over the couch. No homework on a weekday? There was no way that was true. "But if your dad tells me otherwise, I won't go so easy on you next time."

"I'm serious!” He interrupted before pulling his arms to his chest, his expression gloomy. “And Ruby, you seem nice and all, but I still don't get why dad is suddenly hiring a babysitter for me. I'm fourteen!" He threw his hands up in the air to accentuate his point.

"Ahh…” If she had to guess, it was probably because of all the disappearances that had been happening, but she bit her tongue before saying it out loud. “Maybe he thought you’d be lonely with him doing these late-night shows!"

Her voice cracked with the lie; she was quickly discovering she sucked at lying.

Steven thought about this, his views spun in a new light. "You’re right! Dad is really excited about these gigs, but he said he was afraid I’d be lonely.”

A gurgling noise rang through the silence of Steven’s thoughts - his stomach. “Oh, Ruby, it’s practically time for dinner!”

Oh, right. Food. When was the last time she had eaten anything? "C...coming right up," she replied, uncertainly raising from the couch. She didn’t know the first thing about watching kids - how had Greg roped her into this?

Luckily, Steven seemed to already have a plan in mind. "Let's make something together!" He exclaimed and sprinted ahead to the kitchen.

The two squeezed into the tiny kitchen. Steven was already reaching for the pancake mix. “Brunch is the best!” He explained, pulling a pan out from under the counter. “Or, din...fast? Breakner...dinner breakfast! Trust me, it’s going to be great.”

Greg had said “feel free to eat what you’d like,” so Ruby didn’t see the harm in making food. And it was fun - Steven’s energy was contagious. Soon the two were racing to see who could measure ingredients faster or who could cook a perfectly round fried egg.

By the end of it the kitchen was a disaster, but the reward was a stack of pancakes, eggs, and cut fruit, and Steven was already running to the plastic folding table to begin digging in.

The table shook when you leaned on it, but Steven adjusted some paper under one of the feet to steady it. Once Ruby was certain her chair was one of the good ones, she tested the food, the feeling of the fork foreign and heavy under her fingers.

The pancakes _tasted_ great, but there was something wrong with the way the food went down her throat. She choked a few down regardless, not wanting to insult the boy’s cooking skills.

Time went by smoothly after the two ate - and though the kitchen wasn’t completely cleaned, she told Steven he could hit the hay once he started yawning. She’d take care of it, she explained, because she had to stay up a while longer before Greg would arrive home.

But even with that promise, she soon found herself back at the couch, drifting off to sleep.

Or in some state that was almost like rest. She was repeatedly greeted with flashes from the tv, which she had changed back to the news in hopes of hearing anything about herself.

Instead, one face stuck out and kept returning to her in her sleep. The face belonged to one of the missing people, a woman whose features were remarkably soothing. Her blue hair looked natural on her, and it seemed very soft - almost ethereal. Ruby imagined that she would have a beautiful smile.

Between the sound of the tv's sirens invading Ruby’s eventual slumber, there was the creaking of the door. Her eyes fell on the newscast’s time bar. It was close to midnight.

Too early for Greg to arrive home.

Ruby bolted up, hoping to see Greg had returned despite the odds - but was instead greeted with a thin, deathly pale woman’s gaze.


	2. Chapter 2

The woman's height was only further exaggerated by the thinness of her limbs and body, and her pale skin seemed inhuman, almost iridescent. Her features were narrow and sharp. Ruby swore her teeth were the same; pointed and menacing and a bit too much for her mouth to hold.

Ruby reached for the nearest object in sight - a ballpoint pen, and gripped at the false sense of comfort it gave her. But when the uninvited visitor peered down at Ruby again, it was as if her face shifted. She was still gaunt, but her eyes seemed kinder, and her teeth were certainly normal, if not unreasonably white. Just like that, she had changed to something better suited for a toothpaste commercial than a murderer.

 _You’re fooling yourself, it’s just a trick of the light_ , Ruby insisted to herself. _She must know Greg, it's fine._

...But what if it wasn't? She gripped the pen tighter, swallowing as much fear as she could before asking:

"Do you know Greg?"

The question came out tinny and small. _So much for confidence_.

The woman balked at the question; eyes wide and mouth agape, an animated expression that Ruby would have never pinned on her moments before.

"Do  _I_  know Greg? Shouldn't I be asking you that question?" As the woman spoke, she began to move deeper into the house. "Where's Steven? Is he okay?"

Ruby shot up, uncomfortable with the woman's advancement into the house. She found that standing didn't do much to improve the height difference here - Ruby was very small.

"I do; he asked me to babysit. And Steven’s sleeping." As she moved towards the unwelcome woman, Ruby glanced at the clock - it would be another hour before Greg arrived home.

"Well, I'll just have to wait here then."

With that declaration, the woman sat down daintily on one of Greg's folding chairs, viewing the news from afar without expressing any interest in it's contents. Ruby felt a familiar burning heat raise in her chest and arms - a sense of frustration she'd been feeling since she had woken up weeks back.

"Wait here?!" Her original plan; that it would be easy, she'd simply watch Steven and go home, was crumbling around her. The house was suppose to be quiet and worry-free: what if Greg wasn’t okay with this person being here? What kind of babysitter was she suppose to be, unable to keep someone from entering the house?

It was an over-exaggeration, the pressure Ruby felt in her chest, but once the thoughts began they didn’t stop. When the woman didn’t react to her outburst, she continued:

"How do I know you're even supposed to be here?!" Ruby demanded, loud and dramatic, arms shooting out into the air. Once the words flew free she regretted them - volume, she reminded herself - peeved or not, Steven was trying to sleep.

The woman rolled her eyes before pointing to a photograph.

"We're _friends_ ," she replied, though the sentence rolled from her mouth like poison, as if she was doing everything she could to rid herself of it.

The photograph on the wall was sitting in a patched-up frame, duct tape heavily layered on one corner of the wood. It featured a much younger looking Greg, whose arms were wrapped around a beautiful woman: she towered over Greg, her large presence embracing him with the warmest smile Ruby had ever seen in her working memory. The unwelcome visitor stood at the side of the photograph, looking very uncomfortable despite the grin plastered across her face.

"Oh, you've aged well," Ruby replied without thinking. "I mean, you, you look great! Like, the same," her voice got smaller as she spoke, unable to recover from the slip-up.

"Also," the woman's voice rose with annoyance as she held up a ring full of keys - all assorted shapes, some comically large and others small and glistening. "I got in with a key. One Greg gave me."

The realization that the woman wasn’t going to leave was slowly sinking in, and Ruby returned to her position on the couch. She wasn’t making any further advances towards Steven’s location - Greg would just have to help sort it out if she truly didn’t belong there.

“Okay, that’s fine,” Ruby replied from the side of the couch. “Just wait there for him then.”

The next forty minutes passed slowly. Ruby silently hoped that the news channel would show the face of the woman who had haunted her sleep again, but it didn’t. Instead, it kept cycling back to late night programming; the time was spent watching a young man go on about alien conspiracies.

She split her attention between the tv and keeping an ear out for any trouble from the woman sitting on the chair - but she was silent. Instead, it was the sound of the door opening again that caught her attention. But it caught the unwelcome visitor’s attention faster - Greg was greeted by her face mere inches from his.

"Greg," The woman began before he even had a chance draw a breath. "I've found a lead."

"Oh, that's...great Pearl." He seemed thoroughly wiped out from the long night. "How’d it go Ruby?” he asked, glancing around the woman - Pearl’s - lanky frame. “Was Steven alright?”  
  
Ruby resisted the urge to complain about the lack of the warning about potential guests. “It went fine! Steven and I had a great time, we even made panca-”

Her thoughts flashed back to the not-quite clean kitchen from early and she jumped up. “Oh! The kitchen...I’m so sorry! We didn’t finish cleaning it, hold on!”

Luckily, her memory of the mess wasn't as bad as the actual mess. The oven still needed to be wiped down, and most of the boxes had been left out. Ruby hoped the fruit was still good as she placed it back in the fridge.

As she scrubbed hard at the stovetop, Ruby was able to faintly overhear a conversation from the living room.

“That’s the kid I told you about earlier. Is there any chance you could have her stay at your place for a little while? They’re not looking for her, she should be fine.”

“Greg! You _know_ that's not okay. The only person I’ve ever let stay is Steven.”

“Well...I know, but she's kind of in a tight spot right now. And I'm afraid all this,” at this point Greg’s voice lowered to a level Ruby couldn’t hear, but he soon began speaking normally again. “Will catch up with her. She's a good kid, she doesn’t belong outside in a barn. It’s dangerous! Besides, wasn’t it Rose’s goal to help everyone?"

Ruby waited for the conversation to die down before exiting the kitchen. “All set, Greg.”

“Thanks, Ruby,” he said as he rummaged through his large coat pockets. Out came a crumpled $20 bill and a small folding cellphone.

“I’m really sorry I can’t give you more, but I picked up this prepaid phone for you. It’s dangerous to not have one! My number is already in there - let me know if you need anything, okay kid?”

There was a brief prickling sensation in Ruby’s eyes, but she resisted the tears that threatened to emerge. Besides the clothing on her back and the bills in her pocket, the phone was the first thing she could claim ownership of. The ability to reach out to people made her feel safe.

“Thank you.”

Pearl cleared her throat. “Greg has suggested you spend some time at my home while you sort out where your family is.”

While Ruby had originally planned to deny the offer, the new weight of a phone in her pocket made her confident.

“Okay, thanks Pearl. I really appreciate it and promise I won’t be a burden.”

Pearl waved off her words before heading for the exit. “Let’s just go.”

 

***

 

It began raining almost immediately; light but persistent and horribly cold. At first Ruby expected the two to head for a car, but one never appeared. Instead, they continued to walk; Ruby clutched her phone close to her chest to protect it from the rain.

Ruby was sure that if she could remember having a mother, "walking with a stranger" was definitely on the list of things she was warned about. But Greg knew Pearl, and even if Ruby didn’t like Pearl’s attitude, she seemed fine enough otherwise. At the very least, she seemed less scary than what her knee-jerk reaction had pinned to her.

Ruby shivered, wondering why they were walking. "Pearl, how far is your house?"

"About fifteen minutes away. And before you ask, no, I don't have a car. No, I don't take the bus. It's just some rain, after all."

A grimace formed on her lips. “Do you walk everywhere?”

“Of course not!” Pearl replied, “I have other ways of travelling.”

Ruby waited for an explanation, but it never came. Instead, her feet eventually meet the sand of a beach, the waves making the air all the cooler. A lighthouse broke into her line of sight - and then a monumental statue followed. The statue was of a woman, her multiple arms in various states of disrepair. Held in the statue's hands was a small house.

Pearl walked ahead as Ruby stared at it, entering the doorway. Ruby quickly followed, nearly slipping on the stairway.

“This is incredible! You _live here_?” blurted out Ruby.

Pearl's attention was instead drawn directly to the floor. "Ugh, Ruby, you're dripping water everywhere. Do something about it."

Ruby gave Pearl a blank look, caught off guard by her request. _She_ was the one who had made them walk in the rain. "Do I look like I have extra clothes on me? Wait..."

Inspecting Pearl further, Ruby realized she was as dry as when she left Greg’s house.

"How are you not soaked?"

Pearl returned Ruby’s stare before clapping her hands together and smiling. "Oh! No need to worry about that. Now, let’s get you something to wear."

A large set of incredibly fancy doors located in the back of the house parted for Pearl. She soon returned, the door giving off a lightshow as Pearl emerged. She held a large Mr. Universe t-shirt in her hands; Ruby recognized it as a logo from Greg’s early marketing attempts.

"Here. That should be enough until your clothing is dried. Throw your wet clothes in the hamper and I’ll take care of it later."

Ruby retreated to the bathroom to change. As she pulled off her clothing, the angry bruises and scrapes on her arms greeted her in the mirror. She’d forgotten they had even existed.The damage looked better than when she had first woken up, though they hurt something terrible when prodded. Curiously enough, while her right palm was almost healed, her left had begun scarring up into a raised mass.  

The t-shirt Pearl had handed her easily went to her knees and further. Several attempts at pulling the front, which hung comically low, up higher were unsuccessful; Ruby instead pulled most of the shirt’s collar to her back to supply herself more comfort.

She placed her wet clothing in the hamper as requested and walked out, money and phone in-hand. Pearl was gone - but a blanket adorned with Cookie Cat graphics was draped over the couch, and no less than four pillows sat over it.

Placing most of the pillows to the side, Ruby got under the covers. In her sight were the doors from before.

 _Pearl must be made of money or something_ , Ruby thought as sleep began to grasp at her again. _Lives on a beach, has these weird gadgets…_

Tossing and turning, Ruby caught a glimpse of a large painting of what she could only assume was Steven’s mother as she drifted off, the calming image right at home with the soft blankets she was wrapped in.

_I wonder where my own family is?_


End file.
